Sam Oldham on Euros

Sam Oldham: Is hoping to kick on and challenge for medals at the World Championships later in the year

Sam Oldham: Is hoping to kick on and challenge for medals at the World Championships later in the year

Sam Oldham was happy with his performances at the European Championships and is now focused on the Commonwealth Games and the World Championships later this year.

The Sky Academy Sports Scholar won two silver medals in Sofia and with another two major championships to come in 2014 is hoping to build on his success and add to his medal collection.

"Five or six years ago we wouldn’t have even been in contention for a medal so to be disappointed with a European silver shows how far British Gymnastics has come in the last few years"

Sam Oldham

Oldham admitted that the team's primary goal was to defend their European crown and that their failure to do so was frustrating. However, he argued that any disappointment at 'only' getting silver showed how far British gymnastics has come.

“We went out there trying to defend the team title as our main aim, we managed to do that in qualifying but in the competition we made a couple of mistakes early on and we left ourselves a bit too much to do at the end," he said.

"Obviously there is a little bit of disappointment there but it has highlighted the things that we need to work on ahead of the World Championships.

“If you think that five or six years ago we wouldn’t have even been in contention for a medal, so to be disappointed with a European silver medal – I wouldn’t say we’re disappointed but we know we could have done better and we know we’ve got it in us to do better.

Real high

"It shows how far British Gymnastics, especially on the men’s side, has come in the last few years. Men’s gymnastics in this country is on a real high."

Individually, Oldham picked up the silver medal on the high bar for the second year running. As well as aiming to up the difficulty on his favourite apparatus, the 21-year-old from Nottingham is also keen to compete with the best in the world as an all-rounder.

Sam Oldham looks back on the European Championships

"I’ve said from the start of this year that something that I want to do is to start challenging and fulfilling my potential as an all-rounder," Oldham told Sky Sports.

"My strongest apparatus, floor, parallel bars and high bar, the difficulty is up there now, I can get the scores. For the Commonwealth Games I’m working on a harder vault, increasing my difficulty on pommel horse and putting in a strength element on rings which should raise my all around start value to within the top handful of guys in the world.

"Then I can work on that throughout the summer and get that consistency so that by the World Championships hopefully those routines will be as easy for me as the routines I did at the European Championships.

"I was very calm going out there because I knew that these routines were well within my capabilities and I just have to do them like I do them in training, so that’s the stage I want to be at for the World Championships later this year.”